Re: version() output vs. 32/64 bits

Greg Smith wrote:
> I think I'm now up to having wrote something to break apart the output
> from version() into individual fields for 3 different companies. If
> you're got a bunch of database servers on a network, it seems inevitable
> that eventually you'll end up collecting information about them via
> queries against port 5432 for managing everything, and the output from
> version() always ends up on that hotlist.

Good point, but if you want to do reasonable monitoring, don't you also
want information on CPU, disk, etc.? So really, you need shell access
anyway. Plus, my point was the the version output isn't all that
reliable anyway, because it tells you about the build system and build
compiler, not the host system and host compiler (if any). I think it's
tempting but not terribly practical.

> There are also some use cases related to writing tuning tools, where for
> example the platform bit size determines what range some settings can
> reach. Again, you can just parse it out if that starts being included,
> but it would be cleaner to grab just that one piece. (Right now I just
> look at the maximum value for one of the settings I know changes size to
> figure that out when this pops up)

That was one reason why people approached me to raise this subject. But
after consideration, I think it is much better to actually query the
maximum values directly rather than trying to reverse engineer them from
platform information.